First Impressions
by NinthFeather
Summary: Or, the story of how the Elric brothers became Roy Mustang's problem, and the reasons why he doesn't actually mind. Set in the same AU as Unexpected.


_A/N: This oneshot is a prequel to Unexpected, an AU oneshot I wrote, in which Ed and Al are child prodigies who are attending the same college as Ling, and Mustang. If you haven't read Unexpected yet, please read it first—there are some things I don't fully explain in this story because they were in Unexpected. For those of you that have read it already, this is basically the story of how Roy met the Elrics, which was one of the things I'd wanted to put into Unexpected but didn't really have time to write by .11. _

_My portrayal of younger!Roy owes an awful lot to RandomCheeses's story Restitution, which is one of the best FMA fics I've ever read, period. Since it's one of the only long fics I've read which features a younger Mustang, it ended up influencing this pretty heavily. Anyhow, it's awesome, even though it's been on hiatus for about a year, so you should go read it._

_Thanks again to miladyRanger, who's been beta-ing a lot of things for me lately, come to think of it…_

**First Impressions**

Roy Mustang groaned inwardly when he saw the look on Professor Grumman's face.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, careful not to let apprehension show on his face.

It was a little more than month into his freshman year of college—only October, and early October at that—and he was already in over his head. He was here on a full-ride scholarship, which had a lot of conditions, a community service hour quota among them. And so when Grumman had offered him a volunteer position in the Office of Student Affairs, he'd accepted it. Unfortunately, it seemed as though that choice was going on his list of "Bad Decisions I Have Made," slightly below the time that he tried to impress his internship director's daughter, Riza, with a particularly difficult skateboard trick and instead ended up with about18 different bruises and a mild concussion.

Saying Grumman was a slave-driver seemed a little harsh…but only a little bit. The man expected more work out of Roy than most of the professors who he actually had classes with. And Roy had the sneaking suspicion that a large amount of that work consisted of things that Grumman was supposed to be doing himself. Of course, he had no actual proof, and complaining about one of the college's oldest, most respected teachers who was involved somehow in half of the administrative offices on campus probably wasn't such a great idea.

Grumman smiled at Roy, a smile made slightly frightening with the promise of even more work.

"I need you to go talk to a pair of students who haven't been showing up for class," Grumman said. "I've been asked to check up on them by a number of their teachers."

Roy raised an eyebrow. "They're adults, right?" he asked. "Why should we check up on them?"

"Actually, Alphonse is 10 and his brother Edward is 11," Grumman corrected.

Roy couldn't quite keep himself from gaping. "Isn't that a bit…young?"

"They're dual enrollment students," Grumman said dismissively. "It isn't as if they're attending college full-time."

"But still…" Roy said slowly, wondering exactly how smart these kids were.

"Roy, do you know who Van Hohenheim is?" Grumman asked casually.

"Yeah, of course I do," Roy said. "He started out with Xerxes Labs when he was only a teenager, and then moved to China and joined up with Xing Industries, where he more-or-less revolutionized the company's chemicals branch. I heard a rumor that he came back to the U.S., but…"

Grumman's smile was knife-sharp. "They're his sons."

This time, Roy wasn't able to stop his jaw from dropping completely. "You're kidding."

Grumman shook his head. "It's the truth. I have copies of their birth certificates and it's his name on the line marked 'Father'."

Roy just stood there, blinking.

"Here's the address," Grumman practically chirped, handing him a number of folded papers. "Have fun!"

Roy smiled weakly and wondered what the chances were of Grumman retiring before he graduated.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Hohenheim's house was in Resembool, about a half-hour's drive from the campus. It was a nice little place, by anyone's standards—it was clean and pretty, but not movie-set pristine like some of the other suburbs nearby. It looked lived in, and homey. He made a mental note to check out the real estate prices for the area online—he'd have to live somewhere after he graduated, after all.

Yep, Resembool seemed like a normal, calm place—the last place one would expect to find a genius like Hohenheim and his apparently-just-as-smart sons. He slowed down his car—a Ford Mustang, of course; his foster mother had a twisted sense of humor—as he arrived on the street listed on the boys' address.

_108 Macintosh Avenue…_ Roy thought, searching the house numbers. There was 123, and 117…

He was distracted from his mental counting by a rather unusual sight. After all, how often did one generally see what looked like the remains of a very big explosion in the middle of a residential neighborhood?

The singed remains of a white picket fence surrounded a field of blackened grass and one half-charred, dead oak tree. All that was left of the house were a few pieces of concrete that had probably been the foundation at some point.

But the mailbox was still there, a little singed, but, oddly enough, still standing. Thick, black numbers labeled the mailbox as belonging to number 108…

_Oh, no…_ Roy breathed inwardly, quickly pulling over and practically leaping out of the car.

The smell of chemicals assaulted him almost immediately, so potent that it stung the inside of his nose. He didn't recognize all of them, but he could definitely smell things that didn't belong in a residential neighborhood.

_What did you do, Hohenheim? _He wondered.

He glanced around. What was he supposed to do now? The house was gone…heck, the occupants were more than likely gone, too. He assumed that the yard was so empty because someone had removed the wreckage, not that everything had been evaporated (although you never knew with someone as smart as Hohenheim; when the smart ones messed up, they usually messed up spectacularly…) but still, an explosion big enough to scorch that much? He didn't want to think about being anywhere nearby when it happened.

The house next-door had a wide lawn—probably their saving grace during the accident. A few yards from the scorched fence, a girl with sun-yellow hair, no older than 12, sat on a large rock, holding an old portable radio and a screwdriver in her hands. She was wearing a black tank-top and purple capris, and her blue eyes were narrowed as she fiddled with one of the dials.

"Excuse me…" Roy started, hesitantly.

She didn't so much as flinch.

"I said, excuse me!" Roy repeated, more loudly, cupping a hand around his mouth.

The girl looked up in wide-eyed surprise. "Huh?"

"Excuse me, do you know where I can find Edward and Alphonse Hohenheim?" Roy asked.

The girl's eyes clouded over for a second, as if something were troubling her, before she grimaced, the expression making her nose wrinkle up slightly.

"Don't call them that," she said, as if imparting a piece of great wisdom to him. "Their last name is Elric, like their mom. Ed doesn't like their dad very much. He'll get mad if you call him Hohenheim."

Roy raised an eyebrow. "And what would happen if I made him mad?"

"I dunno," the girl said quietly. "Normally he'd punch you, but he's been so quiet since…" she broke off. "Why do you want to see them?"

"I'm from the college," Roy explained. "Apparently, they haven't been to class in a while. I work in the Office of Student Affairs; my boss sent me here to check on them."

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, suddenly turning slightly pink. "I knew there was someone who we forgot to call…but didn't their school call you?"

Roy shrugged. "If they had, I doubt I would have been sent here." Actually, he wasn't so sure of that—he really wasn't sure if he trusted Grumman—but he didn't think the man would send him on fool's errands when he could be forcing him to do work for him instead.

"Well, they're not coming back to class anytime soon," the girl said, crossing her skinny arms over her chest.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Mustang said. "But would you mind getting one of their parents for me? If they're going to withdraw from classes, there's some paperwork…"

"They don't have parents anymore," Winry said, a flash of sadness passing through her determined blue eyes. "You can talk with Granny; she's their guardian now."

"But Von Hohenheim…" Roy started.

"He's gone," the blonde girl said, gesturing vaguely toward the horizon. "He left when Ed and Al were little. We've been trying to find him for a while now, but it's like he disappeared."

Roy didn't let the surprise show on his face. First he finds out that Hohenheim had kids, and now he finds out that he walked out on them? This kept getting weirder.

"I'm Winry Rockbell," the girl said, "and my granny's name is Pinako. She's inside; she'll take care of whatever paperwork there is."

Winry led him up to the door of the house, then opened the door and called in, "GRANNY!"

"JUST A SECOND, WINRY!" came Pinako's yell, spoken with the voice of someone who'd smoked for years.

Roy walked timidly into the house. It was small, but cozy, with glossy wooden floors and furniture that had probably served multiple generations of Rockbells. There was a bulletin board on one wall, covered in pictures of Winry, an old woman who could only be Pinako, and a young, blond, blue-eyed couple who were most likely Winry's parents. Also making appearances were a pretty brunette whose green eyes radiated kindness, usually accompanied by two blond boys. When Roy noticed their golden eyes, he realized that they were Ed and Al—Hohenheim's unusual eyes were part of his notoriety.

"Whaddya want?"

Roy looked up to see an incredibly short, grey-haired woman, unlit cigarette in her hand, standing in the threshold separating the room he was in—the kitchen, he guessed—from the living room. He stopped himself from chuckling, but couldn't help being amused by the fact that she was even shorter in real life.

"I'm here about Edward and Alphonse's dual enrollment classes…" Roy started.

"They won't be attending 'em," the woman said bluntly. "I'm guessing there's some paperwork I need to fill out?"

Roy nodded, pulling out the withdraw forms he'd found among the papers Grumman had given him, and handing them to her.

Pinako frowned, then walked over to the kitchen table, grabbing an old-looking ball-point pen and starting to fill in information.

"So, will they be back for the spring semester?" Roy asked politely.

"Not likely," Pinako said without looking up.

An awkward silence descended, with Pinako's pen scratching across the paperwork being the only sound. Winry stood awkwardly near the door, watching the two of them with something like trepidation in her eyes.

"If you don't mind me asking…what happened to Edward and Alphonse's house?" Roy asked carefully.

To his surprise, it wasn't Pinako who answered. It wasn't Winry, either.

It was an unfamiliar voice, high and young, but with the unmistakable scratchiness of smoke damage.

"We're sorry," it said, and Roy heard the sound of footsteps, and the squeaking of unoiled metal. What the….

He turned, startled, and stared.

"We're so sorry," a blond-haired boy, with eyes that clearly marked him as Hohenheim's, rasped, his voice heavy with tears.

His face, his hands, almost every surface on his body that wasn't covered by clothing, was wrapped in bandages. The ones around his hands were tinged pink. His hair was short and messy, the haircut uneven and clearly done recently.

The boy's hands were wrapped around the handles mounted on the back of a wheelchair. And in the wheelchair was another boy, his golden eyes dead and lightless, shaded by thick bangs of the same color. One of his shirt's sleeves hung empty, and the same was true of one of his pants legs.

It took every ounce of control Roy had not to swear aloud. What had happened here? And then, he looked at the bandaged boy again, and it clicked.

The one area of the boy's face that wasn't bandaged was the area around his eyes. And the un-bandaged parts formed a very familiar shape—the shape of a pair of laboratory goggles.

It wasn't a question of what Hohenheim had done, had never been a question of what he'd done. It was a question of what Edward and Alphonse had done.

"You blew up the house," he said. It wasn't a question.

The bandaged one nodded, wincing at the movement.

"What were you trying to do?" he asked, trying to be gentle. Dealing with kids wasn't his forte, but even he knew that these two were probably traumatized. Who wouldn't be? He knew what a chemical explosion could do, and it wasn't pretty. He'd heard of people who'd escaped them worse off than these two. But those people had been adults. Who the heck let two kids—prodigies, yes, but still kids—have enough chemicals to make that kind of explosion?

The boy grimaced, then mumbled something into his chest, avoiding Roy's eyes.

"What?"

"We just wanted to see Mom again," the boy murmured.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Roy gaped at the two boys—well, inwardly at least. Outwardly, he wore a tight frown, because pretending he didn't care was probably his best shot at retaining what shreds of dignity and sanity remained to him.

He'd heard worse life stories, he was sure of it. He just couldn't remember any of them right now.

Their father leaves them, then their mother slips into a coma, and so they decide they're going to find a way to cure her themselves. Instead, they blow up their childhood home and all their possessions with it, disabling themselves permanently in the process.

Roy knew it was none of his business. He hadn't even known these kids three hours ago. He didn't really know them now, either—he'd just managed to get a quick summary of all the lowest points in their lives. But there was a part of him—the part that Hughes always teased him about, the part of him that wanted to believe that there were good things in this world, hidden within all of the bad ones—wanted to do something for them. More than that, he _needed_ to do something for them.

Roy could be a jerk, he'd admit that readily enough. He liked messing with other people's heads, and he didn't always take their feelings into account. But he didn't like seeing people being hurt, especially not if there was something he could do about it.

He didn't really know what possessed him to say it. He didn't even realize what he was saying until it was out of his mouth.

"Do you want to continue your research into biomedicine?" Roy asked.

Al opened his mouth, and though his expression didn't change, the confusion in his eyes was palpable.

"Not for your mother, for you," Roy continued. "Neuroscience, tissue regeneration…those are fields that scientists still haven't explored to their fullest potential. But you two are smart—you'd have to be, to be taking college classes at your ages. If you enrolled full-time in the chemistry program, you might be able to find something new…something that could fix some of what happened to you. I can't make you any promises. But I can offer you a chance, and that's more than what you have now."

Al shook his head. "I don't think I'll be able to go to classes full time—they're going to be doing reconstructive surgeries periodically over the next few years, and I'm going to be spending a lot of time recovering. But maybe Brother…." He trailed off.

Roy tried to catch the boy's eyes, but they just stared straight ahead, blank and lifeless.

"Aren't you even a little bit interested?" Roy pressed. "Or do you want you and your brother to stay the way you are?"

And then he saw it. A flash of fire lit the deadened gold eyes.

"Get out," Pinako said flatly.

Roy flinched at the venom in her tone.

"Look what science did to these boys!" she spat. "And you want them to continue with it?" She practically threw the paperwork at him. "Get out."

Roy stuffed the papers into his pocket and practically ran out of the house, but he couldn't quite make himself regret what he'd said.

And if the fire he'd seen in Edward's eyes had been real…then it had been worth Pinako's anger.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Roy explained the situation to Grumman, who barely reacted. Life went on. He didn't forget his encounter with the Elrics—it was a little too unusual for that—but it did fade to the back of his mind.

And so, a year later, he was startled when someone knocked on his door.

"Hey, you there?" a voice he couldn't place asked.

"Who's…" Roy started, glancing at his roommate.

Maes shook his head, afternoon sunlight briefly glinting off of his square glasses. "You're closer to the door. You get it."

Roy grumbled under his breath, but got up and opened the door.

It took him a few minutes to figure out why the two blonde boys outside of his door, one wearing a red hoodie, the other in an identical green one, looked so familiar. And then, he looked at the shorter of the two's eyes. They were a molten shade of gold, burning with determination in a way he'd only seen once before.

"Edward?" he asked. "Alphonse?"

"We took your advice," Ed stated. "We're coming back here as soon as we graduate."

He fell silent for a second, until Al poked him in the ribs. Ed glared at his brother briefly before turning back to Roy.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

Roy nodded, acknowledging both the gratitude and the amount of effort that it had cost Ed to extend it.

In the meantime, Maes had come up behind Roy and decided to introduce himself in his customary way.

"Hey, do you want to see some pictures of my girlfriend?" he asked, waving them in Ed's face. Ed drew back, surprised, nearly tripping.

Roy grabbed the photographs out of his best friend's hands and held them up in the air. "Now, now, these two are still preteens. Their hormones are likely to kick in any time now. Are you sure you want to show them pictures of Gracia?"

Ed turned as red as his hoodie. "Shut up!"

Al blinked at Roy, confused.

Maes gave the two boys a suspicious look. "The two of you wouldn't try to steal my Gracia from me, would you?"

"Of course not!" Ed huffed. "I already have enough trouble with Winry…" he turned even redder as he realized what he'd just said, "erm, I mean, not that she's my…I mean…"

Al lifted a hand to cover his mouth—covered in a network of tiny scars, Roy noticed—and started laughing. Maes joined in, while Roy just smirked.

"You seem nice enough," Maes said. "My name's Maes Hughes; I'm Roy's roommate." He extended a hand.

"I'm Ed Elric," Ed said, ignoring Hughes's hand, "and this is my younger brother Alphonse."

"Younger?" Maes asked. "But you're sho—"

Al waved to get Maes's attention, then put a finger to his lips and shook his head. Roy glanced at Ed and noticed that he was turning an interesting shade of magenta, and it wasn't embarrassment this time.

Maes, wisely, changed the subject. "So you're planning on coming to school here?"

Alphonse nodded. He'd grown out his bangs, and they were now long enough to cover most of his face. "We're going to study biomedicine."

"That's pretty complicated stuff," Maes said, surprise and a little respect in his tone.

"We can handle it," Ed said.

And as soon as he said it, Roy knew it was the truth. He allowed his smirk to soften into a half-smile.

"If you need help with anything, let me know," he said.

Al nodded seriously, while Ed scowled but didn't actually protest.

If Roy had realized what he was getting himself into…well, actually, he probably still would have done it.

_A/N: So, I hope this clears up the background of the relationship between Roy and the Elrics. In case you're wondering why Roy's no longer rooming with Hughes, it's because Hughes married Gracia when the two of them were in their junior year, so they're now living together off-campus._

_I don't know if I'll write more for this AU or not after this…if I do, it will probably be more oneshots. I've learned that making promises about sequels isn't such a good idea, so I'll just say that one's not out of the question._

_Thanks for reading! Oh, and please leave me a review, if you have the time._


End file.
